


The Fall

by Letter_from_the_refuge



Category: Ghostbusters (1984-1989; 2020), Ghostbusters - All Media Types, The Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Character Development, Character Study, F/M, Fear, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experience, PTSD, The bogeyman is back, There is one singular swear in this if anyone is actually worried about that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letter_from_the_refuge/pseuds/Letter_from_the_refuge
Summary: Egon Spengler has fought more battles in his life than even he can count. There comes a time when everyone has to lose. After escaping near-death trauma, he can’t stop thinking about it. Constant flashbacks recur, generating enough fear to set free an old enemy. Egon blames himself, and has to face his fear to free his friends.A re-write and continuation of The Real Ghostbusters Season 3 Episode 3 The Bogeyman Is Back. Contains a few elements from episode 0304 as well. This is essentially a fix-it fic where the “Junior Ghostbusters” don’t exist, and Slimer finds Janine and Louis for help instead.
Relationships: Egon Spengler & Janine Melnitz & Louis Tully, Egon Spengler & Ray Stantz & Peter Venkman & Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz & Egon Spengler, Janine Melnitz/Egon Spengler
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. The Last Battle Before The Rest Of Their Lives

The firehouse has been awfully quiet for a Thursday afternoon, almost suspiciously so. The clock casually meanders past 3pm without a single call. Ray is making mechanical adjustments on Ecto-1’s new Proton cannon, Peter is attempting to make himself a late brunch, while Slimer steals every ingredient.

Downstairs, Egon beats Winston in two rounds of Gin Rummy at a card table they’ve set up near the staircase. Janine watches on, painting her nails, waiting on a call. Newest addition to the payroll, accountant Louis Tully, clacks away at his keys, calculator tape running a mile long. As it would turn out, what Peter had referred to as “taking care of the funds” for the first three years they were in business was one crinkled up pile of receipts and nothing more. Louis fully blames the first closure on this, and is doing everything he can to get things back in order. 

It’s a lovely day out, and the crisp, cool autumn breeze is sweeping nicely through the garage doors, bringing a few leaves in with it, but no one is bothered enough to stop them.

“Care to help me build some new equipment in the laboratory? I finished the schematics this morning. If all goes well, we’ll be able to turn ectoplasmic beings into solid matter,” the resident inventor asks his old pal. 

“So, we could punch ghosts to knock them out, no packs needed?” Winston is intrigued. 

“In theory, yes. It could lower our costs exponentially.”

“Costs for a job  and the cost for my chiropractor,” he laughs, looking over at the immensely heavy proton packs in question, before standing up with a yawn and a stretch of his shoulders. The two men head to their research and design lab, and set to work, soon joined by Ray. Peter is busy at work “cleaning out his desk,” and by that he meant wading up papers and throwing them across the floor, much to the chagrin of the other occupants when they see the mess. 

The metal hull of the machine is nearly complete by the time the fire alarm rings, and the men sprint for their pole. 

“There’s a thirty-foot stingray with an eye attacking the World Trade Centre,” Janine explains quickly. 

“Seems awfully dangerous out there,” she worries. It’s already past 8 o’clock. The sky is pitch black, and thunderstorms and pouring rain have rolled in where the sun had so recently shown. She had watched it happen, had wrangled the mess of doors in to stop the building from flooding by herself, while no one else had batted an eyelash, let alone notice the change. 

“A class 9 full-torso anamorphic apparition,” Egon reasons. 

“Dea’un Delta, an elder god of Honduran legend,” Ray more precisely quantifies, voice thick with dread,

“Sounds like we’ll be gone a good while.”

“Thank you, Janine. Have fun locking up without us,” Peter jeers. 

“It’s too dangerous out there. Besides, who would open the doors without me,” she laments, quite liking the thought of overtime, as well as genuinely worrying for them. She has a bad feeling about this job that she just can’t shake. 

When they arrive on the job, things are even worse than they had suspected. The entire building is fleeing, which makes just entering the doors a struggle, but the elevators bare a sign that reads “down for storm”. This leads to an exhausting and precarious climb up one hundred and three flights of stairs before they reach the roof access. Timing opening the door between strikes of lightning is crucial if they didn’t want fried to a crisp by the steel door, which can only be judged by ear. Winston, ever the king of timing arcade games, manages to safely free them, all the while Venkman impatiently whining about how, “they better be paying extra for this.”

Outside, however, is the farthest they’d been from safe in what seems like forever. “Shit,” Ray promptly sees only one solution. “We’ll need Ecto-2.”

“Why didn’t anyone think of that before the climb?” Pete grunts. 

“Lapse of judgement on my fault,” Ray shrugs,

“It looked much closer to the building from the ground.”

“Listen,” Winston addresses the team firmly,

“You three stay here and try to weaken him. I’ll bring up Ecto 2, pick up Pete, and we’ll gun him down from behind.” 

The others nod in agreement as he sprints for the steps. It’s a good thing he’d remembered to jamb the door open as well, as no one else had. 

“Neutrona wands on full capacity,” Egon instructs. “If we electrify it enough, the positive ions in the proton streams will attract the negative ions in the lightning and act as a lightning rod. If we can direct enough towards it, it will be as if we had double the firepower.”

The boys listen, and though the foe is flighty and fast, they manage to direct two strikes of lightning towards it before it flees out of reach, leaving the rest of the storm to hit the rod above the access door, or worse; very nearly reaching the boys in grey. 

Eventually, the one-eyed blue terror gets bored and starts throwing electricity back at them, leaving Ray, Egon, and Peter to take shelter behind any and every bit of architecture they can. Ray ducks behind the rather large television satellite, while Pete backs himself into the stairwell. This leaves only a small air conditioning unit for Dr. Spengler to hide behind. As the beast swoops in circles around the building, they manage a few more shots, significantly slowing it down. Dae’un retaliates by taking a dive towards the rooftop, throwing Egon backwards off of the building, plummeting to the ground with deathly force. The others drop what they’re doing, screaming for him, sprinting to the place where he last stood, but they are moments too late. 


	2. An Old Friend, An Old Foe, And An Old Feeling

Falling. Egon recalls the feeling in intricate detail. The weightlessness of gravity, his boots slipping from their last grip upon the bricks. The wind rushing through his carefully combed hair. Fear flooding his every vein while he knew and accepted the fate of death he’d find at any moment. He’d studied death so thoroughly over the years, and certainly didn’t fear it. This was one of very few facts that confused him.

_ ‘I’ve  been  through  the  underworld and back, why would I be afraid?’ _ He thinks to himself. He gulped one final breath of air. The horns and whirs of traffic below echoed louder with every passing second. The fall felt like more minutes than he’d ever counted, and none at all, all at the same time. He closed his eyes, settled and at peace. One final thought hits his mind. With what he believed to be his final word, he shouts it aloud:

“Janine.”

It was at that moment that Winston reached Egon’s height with the Ecto-2, rescuing him and saving the day.

His final thought, the secretary who he’d shared so many long and tiresome days with, who was always there when he needed her, had spiked Egon’s adrenaline enough that he could reach out and catch the rudder of the helicopter, which in turn returned him to the safety of the roof. 

He sits out the rest of the fight on the cement, something he’d never do by choice, but he’s too shaken to stand, let alone to be an effective aid in battle. Winston picks up Peter just as planned, and within a few minutes they gun the ghost down with Ecto-2’s proton cannon, making it easy for Ray to lay a trap and contain the fiend. The moment the ghost is captured, the entire team runs toward where their friend sits in wait, shouting his name, asking if he’s alright. Egon stares blankly out at the night sky in front of him, still trying to comprehend what had just happened. All he can offer to their remarks is the same monotonous lie he’d used every time something went awry: 

“I’m fine,” he tells them, before asking,

“Can we go home?”

He’s not comfortable with their crowding, especially not during a philosophical crisis, but accepts help to rise to his feet. 

“Nearly bit the big one there, did ya?” Peter jests, walking mindlessly into the staircase. 

“Say, Pete, we have a helicopter,” Winston calls after him, but it’s too late. He looks to Ray, and they both shrug it off. The chopper only fits two humans comfortably anyhow, but the two trips it takes them to get to the ground are still complete in half the amount of time it takes Dr. Venkman to descend the staircase, emerging grouchier than normal. Egon has taken the back-most seat of the Ecto-1, while the others folded the helicopter back into the roof, still complete by the time Peter begrudgedly takes the passenger seat. 

“I tried to warn you.”

“Sure thing, man,” Peter glares with irony.

The rest of the long trip back to the firehouse was trapped in a thick cloud of unfamiliar silence. Egon Spengler is staring out the window in front of him, quite blankly. The stars in the night sky and the street lamps of the city all looked the same, bright streaks of light warped by the rain. The easiest thing to see through the window at night is his own reflection. He finds this calmly introspective, as if searching through his own mind was easier with it staring back at him.

_ ‘Why was I afraid?,_ _’_ runs through his thoughts, before the night’s traumatic events flashed before his eyes once again, sweating, blood pressure rising, every feeling just as strong. He’s shaking just a bit. 

_ ‘Why  am  I  afraid?’ _

Nearly there, Ray finally turns to Egon, having wanted to give him time to cope but also sincerely worried.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” He asks his oldest friend in a hushed tone.

“I’m fine,” he replies, just as before. This is all they hear from the scientist for the rest of the night. He finally breaks the cycle of his thoughts as Janine opens the large firehouse doors by hand, allowing them to pull in. 

_‘We could really use a garage door opener.’_

Knowing this would be the last of her work for the night, she’s already packed her things and put on a raincoat, grabbing her bag and heading towards the side door, outside of which her bright pink Volkswagen bug awaits. 

Egon, with his back-left door to the Ecto-1 still open, but standing more than two feet above it, stares intensely at her the entire time, inspiring a bit of a flush and a giggle on her part as she calls back, 

“Goodnight, boys,” before shutting the door behind her. 

_ ‘What  does  she have to do with  this?’ _

No one had time to explain what happened, as it was nearly 10 o’clock and she was rightfully in a hurry to get home. Louis had left nearly an hour before, and she’d been playing Pong against her computer ever since, the boredom and quiet driving her mad. 

Egon, distracted, distraught, and overtired, walks directly into the car door as he attempts to head upstairs. 

“Woah there, buddy,” Winston warns, deciding to follow him closely on the staircase, just in case. 

Despite his greatest efforts, Egon can’t sleep a wink. Instead he stares at the ceiling for a few hours, trying and failing to logically categorize thoughts riddled with emotion. Come to think of it, he’s always struggled to understand these things. He still never knew why his brother cried when he straightened their half of a Slinky. 

_‘I’m not afraid of heights,’_ he reasons,

_‘I’m not afraid of falling, and I’m certainly not afraid of death. I’m not afraid of Janine.’_

_‘Well, maybe a bit. What if- what would happen to her if I’d hit the ground. She’d end up depressed and distraught and,’_ he’s upset now, just the thought of it drawing a hairline crack across his stoic heart. 

_‘What if she quit, the guys couldn’t take care of her, and-‘_ his thoughts are speeding past at one hundred miles per hour now, he’s lost control, and that’s something he cannot stand. He couldn’t bare to think about what would come next.

After a few hours of shut eye, Egon wakes again, shaking, clammy, reliving the fall all over again. He decides that thinking is the worst solution, and he’d rather watch something mindless on the television. He dons his slippers and quietly opens the bedroom door, trying his best not to wake the others. This plan is foiled just as quickly, when he walks face first into the onion-headed ghost they’d kept around for research. The creature yells a bit, and Egon is absent-mindedly disoriented. 

“Oh. Hello. What are you doing up at this hour?” He asks it, rubbing his head and looking at the clock. It’s just past four in the morning. 

“Wa-wa,” Slimer explains as best he can. The scientist stares blankly at back at him for a moment, trying to comprehend that. 

“Oh! Here,” he nods to follow him. They trek down the hall to the kitchen. It’s dark, even with the lights on, as one is burnt out, but Egon reasons that he can fix that in the morning. He pours a glass of water from the tap and hands it to the sleepy green blob floating behind him. 

“There you are. Goodnight.”

He’s correct in his solution, and the ghost floats back towards the sleeping quarters. 

Now Egon had been left alone with a far greater monster — his own thoughts. He grabs a few snacks and walks, very careful of the creaky floorboards he’d memorized years ago, to the living room, all the while trying to sort through everything that had happened that night. 

_‘I was afraid of what would happen to her if I died. That’s a plausible answer. I wouldn’t want her to fall into a depression because of me.’_

Finally, he was getting somewhere. 

“Egon?”

A new voice has joined his head, and that certainly isn’t normal. He tries to shake it out, blaming it on lack of sleep. It’s vague and far off, but all too familiar. Recognizing it feels like a rock in the pit of his stomach. 

“I can hear you, Egon. I’m coming to get you.”


End file.
